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                                                              DS

As an eighty year old, all of my previous generation are gone, as well as a former best friend.

Of my two previous important relationships, the first ended because of my foolishness and her ego, the second because of her past trauma and my immaturity.  Of the not so important:

Neither of us was that excited.

She became a full time Lesbian (says what about me?).

She was more interested than I was.

It took a long time, but the last one and I have made it through fifty-three years.

I had intended to write about a recent friend who I had spent a lot of time with.  After several years of hanging out, I got entangled in a feud I was not part of, and he cut me off.

DS dying months ago changed all that.

When we moved back to Portland Oregon twenty-five years ago, DS and RS helped us settle in many ways.  We had just started with the Lake Oswego hiking group.  They had started a little earlier, and showed us the ropes about what to wear, and what the landscape was like.  I had been gone for too long to remember much.  At the time, even though they were, eleven to fifteen years older than we were, we had a hard time keeping up.

On trips, we frequently got to ride in their van.  We spent several overnights at their cabin on the Siletz River which starts in the Coast Range and runs to the Pacific.  We’d fish in the river, but I struck out completely.  I’ll never be a fly fisher.  We were slightly more successful at mushroom hunting in the local hills.  We backpacked with them a few times.  The slim and light DS would take a much heavier load than we did, even though we were younger and stronger.  He insisted.

DS loved telling jokes; his only problem was that he was so amused that he would laugh during the punch line, which we couldn’t hear.

DS and RS slowed down over the last ten years or so, so they were neither hiking nor backpacking much or at all.  Contact became infrequent.  After they moved into Sunset City (my name for retirement homes, my wife likes it better than God’s waiting room), they mostly kept to themselves.  We would see them at times for coffee or drinks.

DS had lived long and knew a lot about a lot of things.  He told us that since he retired as a doctor he could give us advice, but couldn’t charge us.  We used that a lot.

DS had a history of heart trouble, but we were shocked to hear that he had collapsed and quickly died.  DS and RS have been a huge part of our lives for twenty-five years.  Wife RS is now in assisted living.

                                                               The End

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